Paul McCartney, musician: I often think about the past

Summary

The Interview – Paul McCartney: “I often think about the past”

Podcast: The Interview (BBC World Service)
Date: June 11, 2026
Host: Mark Savage

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Overview

In this episode of The Interview, BBC Music Correspondent Mark Savage sits down with legendary musician Paul McCartney at his London offices. The conversation dives into the making of McCartney’s 19th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, his creative process, storytelling roots, and reflections on the past. McCartney discusses everything from songwriting tricks and family influences to post-war Liverpool and being portrayed in an upcoming biopic. The tone is warmly nostalgic, humorous, and candid, providing unique insight into McCartney’s enduring artistry and personal history.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Creative Process and McCartney’s Songwriting Approach

• Songwriting Beginnings for New Album

  • The album began over a cup of green tea in LA with producer Andrew Watt (“He wanted green tea, he got it right. So you know, and if he can’t get it, he knows someone who can.” – Paul, 04:22)
  • McCartney uses “weird chords” on guitar or piano to break routine and inspire new ideas. (“One of my recent tricks is to find any weird chord just that I don’t even know what it is and then that may intrigue me.” – Paul, 04:56)
  • Even after decades of composing, he delights in surprising himself with strange chords: “That’s why I thought let’s just do anything weird.” (06:19)

• Nostalgia in the New Album

  • The album contains a mix of nostalgic tracks (“Ripples on the Pond”, “Lost Horizon”) and others less so.
  • “There are quite a few nostalgic things on it. But there are also a few that aren’t nostalgic.” – Paul, 06:56
  • McCartney values memories and regards “remembering” as a means to revisit times and people important to him.

2. Storytelling Roots and Family Influences

• Oral Tradition in Family

  • McCartney’s father and cousin Bert were crossword aficionados; his dad loved words and passed this on to Paul (“He loved words...I was the only kid in the class who could spell phlegm.” – Paul, 08:34)
  • Stories and jokes, especially from his Uncle Jack, played a key role in developing his creative and linguistic abilities.
  • “My cousin Bert...used to compile crosswords for the Guardian, Daily Mail. For one of them, he was Mr. Thursday.” (08:34)

• Impact on Lyrics

  • The playful, word-rich atmosphere of his upbringing influenced his lyric writing, fostering both precision and playfulness.

3. Growing Up in Post-War Liverpool

• Family Life and Social Tradition

  • Despite deprivation, there was communal optimism following WWII; music and jokes filled the home, and frequent visiting with relatives formed core social activity.
  • “My dad had been a fireman, so he was putting out the incendiary bombs...But then once that had finished, it was piano, it was music, it was jokes, and that was really good.” – Paul, 10:51

• Social Mobility and Opportunity

  • The postwar Transport and Education Acts opened new possibilities – cheap bus transport and the 11-plus scholarship provided access to wider educational and social horizons.
  • “Transport – there was the Transport Act, so we had buses to everywhere...And the other thing was the Education Act. So it meant that kids like me...suddenly you could get a scholarship.” – Paul, 13:08
  • This expanded world directly shaped the lives and music of The Beatles.

4. Early Adventures and Inspirations

• Hitchhiking Stories
  • Songs like “Down South” reflect his youthful hitchhiking journeys with George Harrison and John Lennon, leading to formative friendships and musical collaborations.
  • “You didn’t have an awful lot of money, but you had just enough to buy a tin of ambrosia creamed rice...If you’re doing that with a mate, you’ve got all these stories and you understand each other very well.” – Paul, 17:26
  • Their shared sense of humor and love of literature (Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”) inspired some of their later surrealistic songs, including “I Am The Walrus”.

5. Archiving and Rediscovery

• Lost Songs and Outtakes

  • The song “Lost Horizon” was rediscovered by an engineer transferring old cassettes. McCartney often finds forgotten material in his archives, sometimes surprisingly complete.
  • “...for this album, we really copied exactly what was on that cassette. Same arrangement, same lyrics, same melody, same everything.” – Paul, 22:51

• Attitude Toward Legacy

  • In the past, he and John Lennon wanted to delete outtakes, but now sees their value.
  • “We thought they were bad at the time, but they’re quite good to learn from. You hear the creative process in action.” – Paul, 23:04
  • The Get Back documentary helped him revisit and reclaim positive memories of the Beatles’ work dynamic, contradicting negative press portrayals.

6. Reflections on Memory and Legacy

• Press, Misconceptions, and Self-Perception

  • Negative media coverage around the Beatles’ breakup shaped his own memories, but seeing old footage gave him closure and altered self-perception.
  • “I was blamed for a lot of things...But when I saw the film, I thought, oh, no, I’m not like that at all. I’m trying to make a record, I’m trying to encourage these guys to be as great as they are. It took a weight off my mind.” – Paul, 23:31

• Past as Source Material

  • Though he aims to live in the present, McCartney constantly draws from his past in writing, seeing nostalgia as an authentic and rich wellspring (“There’s so much rich material in the past, so many memories, that if you’re looking for something to talk or write about, it’s a rich source.” – Paul, 25:41)

7. Looking Ahead: Biopics and His Portrayal

• Biopic Casting
  • Actor Paul Mescal is set to play McCartney in an upcoming film series. Mescal must learn to play guitar left-handed—McCartney jokes about attempting to teach him “Blackbird” but finds Mescal already well-prepared.
  • “He’s got to learn guitar left handed, which he isn’t. So I thought, okay, poor guy, I’ll help him out...But you already know it better than me. Go play me.” – Paul, 27:15 & 28:36

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Memorable Quotes

• On songwriting tricks:
  “One of my recent tricks is to find any weird chord just that I don’t even know what it is and then that may intrigue me.” (Paul, 04:56)

• On nostalgia in music:
  “I like to go over memories because it brings me back to the time, it brings me back to the people. So I think it’s a great way to visit your past.” (Paul, 07:10)

• On post-war Liverpool:
  “It didn’t matter that you weren’t that well off. It was okay. They made it okay.” (Paul, 10:51)

• On his father’s influence:
  “He loved words, he loved to do crosswords...So I was the only kid in the class who could spell phlegm.” (Paul, 08:34)

• On “Lost Horizon”:
  “We really copied exactly what was on that cassette. Same arrangement, same lyrics, same melody, same everything. I just added a little bit of electric guitar to it.” (Paul, 22:51)

• On the impact of the Get Back documentary:
  “It took a weight off my mind.” (Paul, 23:31)

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Key Timestamps

• [03:33] – Songwriting process and starting the new album
• [06:56] – Discussion of nostalgia and “Ripples on the Pond”
• [08:34] – Family’s love of words and crossword puzzles; impact on lyrics
• [10:51] – Memories of growing up in postwar Liverpool
• [13:08] – Importance of the Transport and Education Acts
• [17:26] – Hitchhiking trips with George Harrison and John Lennon
• [21:33] – Rediscovery of “Lost Horizon” and thoughts on the archives
• [23:31] – The effect of public perception after the Beatles’ breakup and the Get Back film
• [25:41] – Nostalgia as source material for songwriting
• [27:09] – Biopic casting: Paul Mescal is playing McCartney
• [28:36] – McCartney’s humorous take on Mescal learning the left-handed guitar part

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Summary

This episode offers a heartfelt look into Paul McCartney’s present and past: how his upbringing, relationships, and enduring curiosity fuel his creative process. The conversation balances affectionate anecdotes with thoughtful reflections on memory, inspiration, and legacy—making it essential listening for fans and anyone curious about the art of musical storytelling.

Transcript

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[Mark Savage]

Hello, I'm the BBC's music correspondent Mark Savage and this is the interview from the BBC World. The best conversations coming out of the BBC People shaping our world from all over the world.

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I want to get freedom.

[Paul McCartney]

I like their freedom.

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[Paul McCartney]

better world for men too.

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We need a ceasefire. We need healing, we need trust.

[Paul McCartney]

These companies don't really. They don't care what governments do.

[Interviewer]

This is a war.

[Paul McCartney]

The first thing that we want is

[Interviewer]

the war to end.

[Mark Savage]

For this interview, I met the musician Paul McCartney at his offices in central London. Born in Liverpool, England during the Second World War, he found fame as a member of the legendary British band the Beatles in the 1960s, which widely regarded as one of the most influential acts in rock and roll history. McCartney shared primary singing and songwriting duties with his bandmate John Lennon and Along with George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the four piece became a global pop music sensation with hits like Help Yesterday and hey Jude. They remain one of the best selling musical acts of all time alongside the likes of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. McCartney was knighted for his services to music in 1997. But despite his huge achievements, the 83 year old seems to be showing no interest in retirement. He's releasing the Boys of Dungeon Lane, his 19th solo album in a long recording career which has changed the sound of music forever.

[Paul McCartney]

John and I used to really think about outtakes. We used to say we should just delete them all but in actual fact it's kind of a good thing we didn't because they're now still being released. We thought they were bad at the time, but they're quite good to learn from.

[Interviewer]

Like you hear the creative process in action.

[Paul McCartney]

A lot of people when they saw the Get Back film, Peter Jackson's film, said that to me that was the thing that they thought was the best thing was as Americans say, they saw the process.

[Mark Savage]

Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Paul McCartney.

[Interviewer]

I'll start with the really hard questions.

[Paul McCartney]

Oh good.

[Interviewer]

I heard this album began over a cup of tea. How do you take your tea?

[Paul McCartney]

How do I take my tea? It was a green tea actually. I was in la so I thought, well they're not going to be able to make a sort of good builders. So I said yeah, do you have any green tea? And Andrew Watt, who's the producer I was coming to see is very resourceful. So you want a green tea, you got it right. So you know, and if he can't get it, he knows someone who can. So yeah, it was a green tea.

[Interviewer]

And you start off like instantly the first track in the album comes to you as you lie there.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, we were just talking and I said to him, you know, we were talking about how you write songs, cuz he writes songs as well. I said well sometimes one of my recent tricks is to find any weird chord just that I don't even know what it is and then that may intrigue me and I go ah, well maybe that could go there, there. So I picked up the guitar which he very resourcefully had a left handed acoustic ready for me.

[Interviewer]

He knew you were coming?

[Paul McCartney]

He did, he saw me coming. So anyway I just went, I said that's a weird chord. So I said see that kind of thing. And then because I was talking about it starting something, I changed the top note, that note, put it there and I made a kind of more reasonable chord. And then so we had a three chord sequence. And so that started the whole thing. He joined in on his guitar and

[Interviewer]

that's the seed of the album. But how great that, you know, after all the songs you've written, you can still surprise yourself with a new chord on the instrument you've played for 60 years.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, no, I think that's why I thought let's just do anything weird kind of thing. But I got lucky because I don't know what that chord is. Somebody classically trained will be able to tell me it's a G. Demented.

[Interviewer]

Demented.

[Paul McCartney]

But yeah, so that's a trick, you know, I sometimes do on the piano. Just boung. And if it's interesting, then you can follow it from there. Just gets you going.

[Interviewer]

And when people hear it, I guess they're going to be hit by the fact it's quite nostalgic.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, I think that's going to be a little bit of a sort of misunderstanding because there are quite a few nostalgic things on it. But there are also a few that aren't nostalgic.

[Interviewer]

Ripples on the pond.

[Paul McCartney]

I love Ripples on the pond. Lost Horizon. It's probably about half and half. But those are the ones that I've been talking about, the nostalgic ones, because they're interesting stories and I like to have memories. I like to go over memories because it brings me back to the time, it brings me back to the people. So I think it's a great way to visit your past. You know, just remembering. Ah, you know, it's just like sitting around talking to people. My old Uncle Jack, now Nancy, my wife, if we're at a dinner party with guests and stuff, she will stop me the minute I get to Uncle Jack. She said, no, not Uncle Jack.

[Interviewer]

What did Uncle Jack do?

[Paul McCartney]

He was. He was great. He was a great guy. He was a tall guy. He had a kind of raspy voice and he used to tell jokes. He was like ace joke teller in the family. So the minute I'm getting around to him, she knows I'm going deep and she sort of says, maybe not. Let me just stick to sort of what you're doing now, Paul.

[Interviewer]

But it's interesting because obviously there's a great oral tradition in your family. Your dad told a lot of stories and I've heard you say he had a very colorful turn of phrases. Do you think that has influenced your lyrics as a writer?

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, I think so. He loved words, he loved to do crosswords. And he would be Very keen for me to know certain words that you wouldn't otherwise have known. So I was the only kid in the class who could spell phlegm. Right. He said no. And what he used to do, which I think is a really good trick, was he would sound it out so that it became phlegm. So, you know, I knew it was P, H, L, E, G, M. And now your listeners know. Yeah, but he. That was the kind of guy he was, you know, he loved words. And so I think I picked up that. And my cousin Bert again, Nancy probably stopped me. No, no, Jack on over. But I loved my cousin Bert and he used to compile crosswords for the Guardian, Daily Mail. He was. For one of them, he was Mr. Thursday. But he was really good. It's not anyone can do that.

[Interviewer]

And can you complete a crossword?

[Paul McCartney]

I have got out of the habit. I used to do a lot.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, you must have been a crossword clue at some point as well.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, I think that's true, yeah. Now, my dad would say, you know, it's anagrams or it's this and that. You look for this and that. So I became very keen on that. And I say cousin Bert was so good that he used to go on cruises as the crossword guy. And in fact, Linda took a photo of him to put outside the room, the cabin where he would invite people in and, you know, he would talk to you about crosswords.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I think it's all consuming, isn't it, once you get into the world, particularly with cryptic crosswords.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, yeah. And it was all. But anyway, so there was a lot of that in my family, so I got a lot of it from that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, tell me about Liverpool and growing up in the 1950s. Like, you sing about what it was like, you know, to go down to the shores and bird watch. But also the kind of the deprivation that was there. Because this is post war and the city's experiencing a boom, but it's also rebuilding itself. What are your memories of that time?

[Paul McCartney]

They were pretty good, actually. I think because the war had ended. All my uncles and aunties and my parents were so relieved that Hitler wasn't sending these bombers anymore. My dad had been a fireman, so he was putting out the incendiary bombs. You didn't talk much about it. You heard just the odd thing. But then once that had finished, it was piano, it was music, it was jokes, and that was really good. So it didn't matter that you weren't that well off. It was okay. They made it okay. And they visited a lot. Uncles and aunties would come visit, we'd go and visit them. That was basically the social thing that happened. But you know, I found it fascinating just hearing them just talk about ordinary things. I mean one thing just comes to mind now, one of them sort of saying to the other, do you have a pension with your job? Have you got a pension? Oh yeah, that was like, that was really something very special and brand new

[Interviewer]

I imagine probably, yeah. Do you have a pension?

[Paul McCartney]

I managed to scrape one together now. But no, it's funny, my grandson was at college and he was doing a thesis and we'd been talking so much about Liverpool and all my old family, his family, you know, when it goes back. And he was fascinated to hear the story of post war Liverpool. He said he was going to make it his thesis and because it was his thesis, he researched it very well, more than I would have ever done. So it turns out that two key things happened when we were kids and all of us in the Beatles and all the kids in Liverpool. Transport. There was the Transport act, so we had buses to everywhere. Literally there wasn't anywhere you couldn't get to. Yeah, so you think about it, that's pretty amazing.

[Interviewer]

It opens the world up.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah. And for people who don't have that much money, I could just hop on a bus, change at Penny Lane, go up, see John. So it opened up the world, the city in our case. And the other thing was the Education act. So it meant that kids like me, my parents couldn't have afforded to go to a posh school or you know, a good school, suddenly you could get a scholarship. The 11 plus it was then. And so there's people like Alan Bennett, you know, I read some of Alan's stuff and it's very similar to my upbringing. His is just more I lad or I lad, you know, whereas mine's Liverpool kind of thing. But a lot of the stories, a lot of the people he writes about and talks about are very similar. So it was okay. It was good growing up really.

[Mark Savage]

You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

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[Mark Savage]

I've met Paul McCartney a couple of times over the course of my career, and one thing that always strikes me is his ability to put people at ease. He knows how overwhelming it can be to meet a beadle, the man that wrote she loves you and Penny Lane and let it be. So he has a way of disarming all of the tension in the room. On this occasion, he walked straight over to me and gripped my hand and said, oh, I know you.

[Interviewer]

And instantly, it was like we were

[Mark Savage]

picking up a conversation that we'd started six years ago when I interviewed him for a previous album. But even with the ice broken, there are moments when he picks up a guitar and strums it where your brain is just going, this is Paul McCartney. But you're also aware that you're there to do a job that you have to try and get some insight into the man who's been the soundtrac to

[Interviewer]

our lives for seven decades.

[Mark Savage]

And hopefully over the course of this conversation, you do get a little glimpse of McCartney's inner life. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Paul McCartney.

[Interviewer]

There's a song on the album called down south about hitchhiking away from Chester.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, it just happened that Chester was the place where all the lorries loaded up. And I'd found that out from somewhere. I'm not sure how, but someone had said, yeah, you know, Chester's the best place if you want to lift. So we go over there, take the ferry across the Mersey and hitch a ride. We got some great rides because often these guys were going down to maybe Birmingham or somewhere, you know, so you got some long haul things. And George and I had a couple of great hitchhiking trips. One was down to Harlech in Welsh Wales, and the other one was down to Exeter down south. And we just had loads of experiences. You know, you didn't have an awful lot of money, but you had just enough to buy a tin of ambrosia creamed rice and you could have that on your little Bunsen burner, on your little camp stove. The point about all that though is that it bonds you.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Paul McCartney]

If you're doing that with a mate, you've got all these stories and you, you understand each other very well. Oh my God. Where are we going to sleep tonight? I don't know. Let's knock on this door. Do you know of any bread and breakfasts? It also makes you not shy. It kind of gives you a little bit of sort of outgoingness. So we did that and I did it with John later. He just had an incredible birthday. 21st birthday gift from his uncle in Scotland, who to us was rich because he was a dentist. And he sent John £100, which to this day I say that's not a bad birthday present.

[Interviewer]

It's not. And in the 60s, that's a lot of money, right?

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, that's what I mean. So it was a fortune, 100 pound. So we hatched this plan to hitch that we would go down south, take the ferry, go down to Spain. We were going to go to Spain with this hundred pounds. We got as far as Paris and liked Paris a lot, so stayed there and spent it all in Paris.

[Interviewer]

And these aren't musical trips. You're just hanging out your friends.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, well, they kind of were musical because we always took our guitars. So you were hitching at the side of the Road. And I think we decided that you need a gimmick. So our gimmick was bowler hats. So me and John in like, leather jackets, bowler hat and a guitar each slung over the shoulder. And. Yeah, so we got quite a few lifts and we got. As far as Paris is saying again, though, it was a really bonding thing. So when I came to write with him, we had all these experiences and we talked about things, found out about each other as you do on those kind of trips. I found out that he loved Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll. And I did too. I was just singing this morning, actually. I saw it in Poetry Please, the BBC book. And it reminded me that my German teacher in school, in the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, he could do Jabberwocky in Latin. What. What is. Right, you know, why would you bother? Why would you want to. To show off. That's what he did. So he would. I was looking through and thinking, how could he. Because it's all strange words. The other thing I discovered is I thought that maybe where John got goo goo jub is jub jub, the jub jub bird. So it was that kind of language, that kind of humor and that kind of stuff that we realized we both loved. So it helped with our bond of friendship. And when we came to write some of the more kind of surrealistic things later on, like Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and I'm A Walrus and things like that, that's what we were drawing from. Yeah, Walrus. I'm the walrus. That's. That's Lewis Carroll.

[Interviewer]

Yes, exactly. I wanted to ask about Lost Horizon. Yeah, because that's a song that you'd forgotten you had. Yeah, that came out of the archives. How many of those are there?

[Paul McCartney]

I don't know. Hopefully there's no. No more. But I had this lovely engineer and he was arranging the tapes from cassette tapes to then the latest thing, which was Dat. Dat things. And that came and went quite quickly. But he. That was his job at that time, to put these onto a more reliable medium.

[Mark Savage]

Archive.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, yeah. And so we were in the studio, he said, have you. Have you heard Lost Horizon? Do you remember that? I said, no, what's that? He said, well, it's one of your songs. Because he looking through on the cassette, he said, and I like it. We played it and there it was. It was very complete. Sometimes if you were working through a cassette, you'll have half the lyrics, little suggestion for the chorus, maybe that. But there it was complete. So I thanked him and for this album, the new album, we really copied exactly what was on that cassette. Same arrangement, same arrangement, same lyrics, same melody, same everything. I just added a little bit of electric guitar to it. But that's pretty much what he discovered, so. Thank you, Eddie.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, but there must be. Like you said, you hope there's not that many of those songs, but I imagine there are tapes and hours and hours of material. What are your plans for what happens to that, you know, 50 years from now, 100 years from now? Have you thought about that?

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah. You know, you do think about it. John and I used to really think about outtakes. We used to say we should just delete them all. In actual fact, it's kind of a good thing we didn't, because they're now still being. I think we're done. But they were, until recently, they were still being released. And they're not bad. We thought they were bad at the time, but they're quite good.

[Interviewer]

Good to learn from. Like, you hear the creative process in action.

[Paul McCartney]

A lot of people, when they saw the Get Back film, Peter Jackson's film, said that to me, that was the thing that they thought was the best thing was, as Americans say, they saw the process. Yeah, it was great to go back to that. I had a strange view of the period because it was business hell and it was a lot. And I was blamed for a lot of things. I was blamed for the breakup of the Beatles and had to sort of shoulder all of that stuff, even though I knew it wasn't true. It's like, you know, the headline on the front of a paper, paul breaks up the Beatles. And then the, you know, denial is months later on page 14. Yes. So I went through a lot of that. But when I saw the film, I thought, oh, no, I'm not like that at all. I'm trying to make a record. I'm trying to encourage these guys to be as great as they are. It took a weight off my mind.

[Interviewer]

Well, isn't it funny, though, how the press coverage kind of changed your own memories of the events?

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, it changed my attitude. To me, I thought, okay, I'm overbearing. Yeah, I can be like that. But I remember one day in the studio doing something, and I'm sort of saying, we should do this, or why about that we could do that. How about this idea? And someone sort of said, oh, yeah, all right, all right. You know, back off. So I took that to mean, don't ever suggest an idea ever again. So I stopped for about a week, and then one of the guys come up and said, come on, come on. What are you doing? You normally got suggestions. I said, well, she told me to stop. But that sort of stuff does affect you. I think you have to bulldoze through it and be quite sort of brave and sort of think, no, I'm all right.

[Interviewer]

And that takes us back to where we've started. You know, you have to go into every project with a fresh sheet of paper. You're not. You can't think about the past. You've got to live in the moment. And you actually sing that on the album.

[Paul McCartney]

That's right. Well, it's Lost Horizon as that in the lyric. Yeah. Which I think is very true, you know. And so I do live here now, but I often think about the past. But then again, I think a lot of people do. So I think writers, what are they going to draw on? Well, you know, the past often. So you know Charles Dickens, he's not going to write about, you know, I got in a carriage this morning and went and got a bun. He's going to write about. Oh, he won't say it, but his father being in jail for debt. He's going to write that as a character. And so we're all drawing on. I'm not liking myself to Charles, but we're all drawing on that. Like I mentioned Alan Bennett, he's always often drawing on that. Even if it's contemporary, it's colored by the past. And I love that. I think it's a great thing. There's so much rich material in the past, so many memories, that if you're looking for something to talk about or write about, it's a rich source and

[Interviewer]

it's instantly authentic, which is.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, is the key. That's true.

[Interviewer]

There's a big film coming out not long from now. Four films in fact.

[Paul McCartney]

Oh, my gosh.

[Interviewer]

Paul Mescal is playing you.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

He's going to do all his own singing. What tips have you given him to recreate the Paul McCartney voice?

[Paul McCartney]

None. None, None. He's a really good actor. I mean, he. He came into this office where we're recording. I've not met him, so I thought it'd be good to meet him, you know, if he's going to play me and everything. So he came in. Now, the thing about Paul, he's got to learn guitar left handed, which he isn't. He's right handed. So I thought, okay, poor guy, I'll help him out. So I pick up this guitar and I think I'll do Blackbird just show him that left handed. So I start playing the song Blackbird.

[Interviewer]

A nice easy one to start with.

[Paul McCartney]

Well, I was going to show him it, you know, I was going to teach him it, I thought, you know, he plays along. Exactly. You think about it, you know, that's what actors do, they study for parts. And in his case the musical side. He's got a guitar tutor with the film, as they all have. You know, there's a drum tutor for Ringel. So yeah, it was amazing how studied and how well educated he was about me. So yeah, I thought, oh well, okay, I'll leave you to it if I'm going to show you Blackbird. But you already know it better than me. Go play me.

[Interviewer]

Bring him out on tour and you

[Mark Savage]

can have a rest.

[Paul McCartney]

Yeah, that's a great idea. Not.

[Mark Savage]

Thank you for listening to the interview. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can find many more episodes of the Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including

[Interviewer]

chat with other music icons such as

[Mark Savage]

Shaka Khan, Pete Townsend and Paul McCartney's bandmate Ringo Starr.

[Interviewer]

Until the next time.

[Mark Savage]

Bye for now.

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